China and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) will work even more closely to enable the development of the country's industrial sector, according to a senior Chinese official.

China will tap UNIDO's expertise and connections within the international industrial community to enhance the productivity of its enterprises. New approaches such as using trust funds will also be experimented with to better utilize UNIDO's resources, Wei Jianguo, China's vice-minister of commerce, told China Daily Tuesday.

For the vast western region of China, a more holistic approach will be put into use to help the underdeveloped area raise its industrial capability in a comprehensive and efficient way, said Wei, who is China's leading delegate to UNIDO's 10th general conference, which started on Monday and is scheduled to end on Friday.

The China International Center for Economic and Technical Exchanges, an agency under the Ministry of Commerce which is responsible for handling UNIDO projects in China, is coordinating with the local governments of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chongqing - among others - to establish industrial development trust funds to be managed by UNIDO, Wei said.

The trust funds will cover issues such as the progression of information technology, investment facilitation and technology transfers. The money will be provided by the local governments.

In addition, the programmes will also help Chinese enterprises to have wider access to the international market and better position them in the "global industrial chain," Wei said.

The Chinese Government and UNIDO will jointly organize the Asia-Pacific Industrial Development Forum on Bio-technology later this month.

The forum comes after a successful symposium on international mergers and acquisitions, held last month in Beijing. The symposium was also a co-operative project by the two.

UNIDO projects in China under implementation are worth US$85 million in technical assistance. The figure accounts for 20 percent of UNIDO's global project delivery and 50 percent of the organization's operations in the Asia-Pacific region.

Technical assistance is the main vehicle UNIDO uses in implementing its projects. The money comes from international organizations and government donations.

UNIDO's Beijing office projected that its total delivery in the 2001-05 period will amount to US$80 million.

(China Daily December 3, 2003)